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For most, 2020 started out with big plans. Whether you had a job to accomplish on a tight schedule, a family vacation planned or big milestones to achieve with your business, it didn’t matter: It all was turned upside down. Everyone everywhere was trying to adapt to a new normal.
EquipmentShare — a company built to solve problems around a moving target — is adaptable. We make sense out of chaos on a daily basis. So, when everything changed in early 2020, we took the challenges head on, and our people and products were put to the test. The team at EquipmentShare did what it does best — solve problems and add value — for our customers, neighbors, team members, friends and communities. At the end of 2020, we had a lot to show for our adaptability, resiliency and dedication to develop meaningful solutions.
We Helped Our Customers Get More Done at the Jobsite
Construction professionals are busy. So when we hear from customers that our technology or equipment rental solutions helped them work more efficiently, it’s a day-maker.
“Watching our technology work in action to save our customers time and money was a huge highlight of 2020,” EquipmentShare CEO and Co-founder Jabbok Schlacks says.
One story comes to mind: In October, an EquipmentShare customer based in Missouri used our technology to locate stolen equipment. They said it was the first time they had been able to find and recover stolen assets within the same day. At face value, the business would have been out $200,000 worth of equipment.
“But it’s more than just the equipment they would have lost,” Jabbok says. “Those were people’s jobs on the lines, and once one project falls behind because of this type of situation, that sets off a domino effect. Our technology made it possible for them to get back to work.”
Here’s what a few of our customers said about working with EquipmentShare in 2020.
“These guys are the best! Super friendly and knowledgeable about anything and everything in their shop. The staff went above and beyond on finding, getting the equipment I need from another location, and got it there on the promised time and date. Can’t wait to use them again on my next big project.” - Equipment rental customer in Seattle, Wash.
“We had $200,000 worth of equipment stolen from us, and we recovered it using EquipmentShare’s trackers. We had it in the yard the next day, sitting there ready to go. We were able to get that revenue back in, get our customers taken care of, get that asphalt on the ground. It’s the first time I ever had anything stolen and recovered on the same day.” - Technology customer in Linn Creek, Mo.
“Awesome company to do business with. Tyler the salesman has been a great help to me and my family company. I would recommend this company to anybody I know and come in contact with.” - Equipment rental customer in Savannah, Ga.
“It was 6 p.m., after hours, and I broke the hydraulic line on my rental machine. I immediately called my salesperson, Mike, to let him know. The next day, I showed up at 6:30 a.m. before we started work, and there was the excavator with its hydraulic line repaired. It was incredible! The other guys would have been closed by that time, and I would have had to schedule the service in the morning, which would have been like pulling teeth. It would have cost me an entire day of work, at minimum.” - Equipment rental and service customer in San Antonio, Texas
“I have rented multiple times with EquipmentShare. They have been really great to work with. Not only do they have the best rates in town but they were really helpful and accommodating to all our needs. They have all new equipment and were able to deliver on short notice. They also didn’t charge me for a day that ended up being really windy that made me unable to use the equipment safely. I don’t think very many companies would have done that.” - Equipment rental customer in Portland, Ore.
We Refined Our Technology to Address Customer Pain Points
In 2020, our technology product teams worked hard to refine our existing technology while also building new solutions for contractors’ most cumbersome challenges. We rolled out a slew of technology updates, improvements and entirely new features to help our customers save time, increase efficiency and productivity and improve company processes and communications across the jobsite. Here’s a look at just a few tech updates we introduced in 2020.
Improving Purchase Order Capabilities to Help Customers Budget Better
We set off to help customers gain better control over their billing in 2020. Updates to our Purchase Order (PO) tools help our customers conveniently manage their own invoices by assigning an existing PO or creating a new one. PO’s include details such as the start or end date of a job and a budget amount, which is important information for contractors. These PO details help contractors understand what they can spend on a project and the timeframe of a project. EquipmentShare rental customers can see these details on their rental order when it's first created.
Thanks to this update, customers can log into our technology platform to update details or change information on their PO at any time! Customers may add or edit PO’s for the company, assign existing PO's, add a new PO, or Edit a PO on a rental order. Plus, to help contractors stay on top of the budget versus rental spend, our PO tool integrates with our Rental Management Dashboard so users may see how their current rental spending compares to their PO budget.
Interactive Fleet Management and Utilization Dashboards Show Customers Data They Want to See
EquipmentShare rolled out new Fleet Management and Utilization Dashboards this year to help contractors access fleet run time, upcoming or existing service, out-of-lock devices and assets within Geofences – all in one place. Mixed fleet managers know it’s time-consuming to track down various utilization data. With hundreds of machines, you only want to see the data you need at any given moment. Our dashboards allow you to do just that by filtering out everything but the data you need to review.
The new Fleet Management and Utilization Dashboards provides technology customers with a snapshot view of essential fleet operations and utilization data. Each tile on the new dashboard provides a quick view of data, which makes it simple to see utilization data at a glance, or conversely, users can simply click on a dashboard tile to dive into the details. We even made it easy to download a visual of your dashboard details to share with your team or company.
Customize Notifications with a New Alert Management System
Our new Alert Management System empowers our customers to receive notifications and alerts across their many jobsites so they can stay on top of their projects and fleet no matter where they are. Set up custom alerts to your email or phone on what matters most to you, whether that’s alerts on maintenance thresholds, vehicle speeding, low battery, fault codes or geofence entries and exits.
Alert Management System also lets users associate specific alerts with specific branches, whether that’s a region, jobsite or facility. When a branch association type is selected, anytime an equipment asset is located at the branch, the alert rules will apply to those assets. This feature ensures assets that travel between branches are included in the alert rules. The new Alert Management System helps construction companies stay in the loop about all the functions of their jobsite so they can take action, prevent breakdowns, monitor productivity and safety and enhance productivity.
Easily Manage Rentals with a New Interactive Rental Dashboard
It’s our mission to simplify equipment rental management for the modern contractor. Our updated Rental Management Dashboard is one solution for streamlined rental management and provides valuable insight into contractors’ up-to-date rental spending and usage on the jobsite. Rental customers can use the dashboard to analyze and review rental management for a specific jobsite, PO or equipment class. Drill down deeper to view information on expenses and utilization, or see which assets are on rent, waiting to be picked up or reserved for an upcoming job.
From the Rental Management Dashboard, our customers can not only understand how their equipment rentals are being used on various projects, but also see exactly how their rental spend is being allocated and budgeted. The dashboard features graphs to compare expenses to budget, a table to track invoices and the option to download all of this pertinent info to easily share.
To save you even more time, we’ve built in the option to quickly schedule an email delivery on a regular recurrence so you can stay on top of your rental data from your inbox. It’s all part of how we help our customers save time and improve efficiency across the built environment.
We Made Our Mark on New Markets With New Rental and Retail Locations
Just last month, we opened our doors to two new markets in California! From our Fontana and Chula Vista branches, we’ll serve the Los Angeles and San Diego construction markets respectively. On the horizon, we’re looking to both the southeast and northeast parts of the country for our next steps in market expansion.
Over the course of the year, we steadily opened new branches in every corner of the country. EquipmentShare is now represented in Albuquerque, NM; Baltimore, MD.; Milwaukee, WI.; Reno, NV.; and Pasco, WA., and that’s not even the full list of 27 locations we opened in 2020!
Find a location near you.
Growing Our Dealership Network
As the modern contractor’s go-to for all equipment solutions, we grew our network of authorized dealerships in 2020. EquipmentShare now has a select number of authorized dealership locations across the country to serve our retail customers’ needs. We’re proud to offer Link-Belt, Yanmar, Doosan, Takeuchi, Case, Wacker Neuson and Sany equipment from a growing number of dealership locations. Each of our authorized dealerships offer reliable and durable heavy equipment options from the brands you trust. Our newest retail location is our authorized Takeuchi dealership in North Salt Lake in Utah.
Plus, your local EquipmentShare dealership will service your machine throughout its lifetime. When you purchase your equipment at an authorized EquipmentShare dealership location, you can trust the EquipmentShare Service team to repair and maintain it to keep it running smoothly. Every piece of retail equipment comes outfitted with EquipmentShare’s tracking technology hardware.
Our award-winning technology, combined with the quality equipment from our OEM partners, means your next-generation equipment purchase will perform in optimal condition for years to come. Use EquipmentShare’s technology on your retail equipment to track its GPS location, utilization rates, upcoming maintenance schedules and more to prevent breakdowns and most importantly, get the most out of your equipment investment.
We’ll continue to grow our dealership network in 2021 to better serve retail customers across the country.
We Showed Our Communities That We’re in This Together
EquipmentShare was fortunate to be able to make a difference during a difficult year. The pandemic affected all of us in different ways, but philanthropies, charitable organizations and social services were especially affected. Throughout the year, our team members joined forces to give back and better their communities with food resources, monetary donations, positivity and more.
“Our people are wildly empathetic, compassionate and giving, and that really shone through this year,” EquipmentShare President and Co-founder Willy Schlacks says. Here’s a look at how the EquipmentShare team made a difference in 2020.
Making Spirits Bright During the Holidays
In December, the EquipmentShare team in Sacramento, CA, held a holiday toy drive benefiting the Firefighters Burn Institute. The toys collected were given to children in the program for the holidays.
At EquipmentShare’s headquarters holiday event, “Santa’s Work Crew Powered by EquipmentShare,” the community of Columbia, Mo., came together to donate 1,462 pounds of food for the local food bank and $4,000 to the Voluntary Action Center’s Holiday Family Program, which provides gifts, household essentials and gift cards to local families during the holidays. Additionally, EquipmentShare partnered with the local Big Brothers and Big Sisters program to ensure all of the "littles" (as well as 130 children waiting to be paired with a "big") received a $50 gift card for the holidays.
A few of our branch locations participated in food drives to benefit their local food banks over the holiday, as well! EquipmentShare branches in Topeka, Kan.; Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; and Columbia, Mo., set out excavator buckets in their lobbies for employees and customers to fill with non-perishable food items.
Recognizing that the pandemic introduced another challenge for those already experiencing food scarcity, several of our team members formed No Child Hungry by EquipmentShare, a program that provided food and resources to local children and families when schools shut down due to COVID-19. The program started with a fundraiser that fueled EquipmentShare’s cooking staff to prepare and distribute over 1,400 meals in March 2020. But the program continued to grow as the pandemic continued, and by the end of the year, No Child Hungry had distributed more than 45,000 meals to families in need in the greater Columbia, Mo., area.
Dedicated to Causes We Care About
In honor of Veterans Day 2020, EquipmentShare and its employees raised $20,000 to support both Hire Heroes USA and Welcome Home, a nonprofit in Columbia, Mo., that empowers homeless and at-risk veterans in mid-Missouri to return to society as productive, self-supporting citizens. We also committed our company to increasing its number of veteran employees by 50% over the next two years. Veterans currently make up about 10% of EquipmentShare’s workforce, and EquipmentShare will commit to participating in military-focused job fairs and in addition to partnering with Hire Heroes USA to support efforts to transition more service members to civilian work.
Just as we all know someone who has selflessly served our country through the military, chances are, we also know someone who has been affected by cancer. In October, EquipmentShare raised funds for breast cancer awareness and research and to support organizations and facilities that provide life-saving detection services. As part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, EquipmentShare employees across the country donated $5 or more to wear pink at work. Together, EquipmentShare employees raised $2,650 through cash donations and a GoFundMe fundraiser.
EquipmentShare matched the employee donations, which resulted in a grand total of $5,300 in donations for National Breast Cancer Foundation and Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. Ellis Fischel Cancer Center will use its share of the gift to support MU Health Care's mobile mammography van, or “mamm van,” which serves 26 Missouri counties and has provided life-saving mammograms on the go to women throughout rural Missouri since 1992. See Ellis Fischel Cancer Center’s response to the news of the donation in this video.
Looking Ahead With Excitement and Determination
EquipmentShare's co-founders Jabbok and Willy Schlacks agree that 2020 was a year unlike any other. But it was no different from any other year in the way that it had its unique challenges and hurdles.
“From a company perspective, there are always struggles we’ll experience,” Willy says. “We see struggle as a critical ingredient to success, and we embrace it as an opportunity for growth, improvement and necessary change. What we can’t control, we can only learn from. It challenged us to find new ways to serve our customers, partners and employees better. That’s what we hoped to achieve in 2020 and what we hope to achieve every year and every month that we experience struggle, roadblocks or challenges.”
What does 2021 have in store for EquipmentShare? If you guessed more growth, innovation and excitement than the past year, then you’d be right.
“We’ve found a pattern of blowing the past year’s expectations out of the water,” EquipmentShare CEO and Co-founder Jabbok Schlacks says. “Every year, we do more and grow more. 2021 won’t be any different. We’re looking forward to beating every record we set for ourselves and providing real value to our customers from coast to coast and beyond.”
EquipmentShare wishes everyone a great 2021. Vaccinations, resumed work and the potential for a rebounding economy make us look to the new year with optimism and excitement for the construction industry. No matter what lies ahead, we're ready to help the builders of America get to work.
